attacking city states

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Jan 12, 2011
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I wonder if someone can confirm this works, I only had an opportunity to try it out twice last night, but it seems too good to be true.

I put all my units in a city states territory, had them all set up to attack/fire, I declare war, I attack, I make peace immediately, I press next turn. Next turn I declare war again and attack with all my forces - which in this case gave me the city, so I couldn't test to see if I could have repeated this dow/peace numerous times. I did receive notifications that resting influence with citystates had decreased, but there was no mass-DOW by every cs in the game. I'm just wondering how viable it would be to early game take out a city state using this method - which would result in zero losses to your own units as the cs can't attack back ever. I know a lot of people are not in favour of attacking cs's, but getting a large city early game could make a tremondous difference - especially if it comes with zero losses. Or alternatively later game, if a cs is allied with someone who will probably dow you at some point and you don't want to leave your flank exposed to the cs forces while your units are on the other side of the map, easier to take out the cs.
 
I was under the impression that a single DoW on a city-state wouldn't trigger the eternal war from all city states. I thought it took multiple DoWs (in my experience, 3).
 
I don't ever attack city states, but even if this works, it doesn't seem like a viable strategy for anything but a domination game. After your 2nd or 3rd DoW, everyone, including the other civs, will hate you.
 
I don't ever attack city states, but even if this works, it doesn't seem like a viable strategy for anything but a domination game. After your 2nd or 3rd DoW, everyone, including the other civs, will hate you.

It's not even a viable strategy for a domination game. You need early partners to be able to supply you with cash on domination. And one long-term buddy who you can sign RAs with. Its not until the late game that you can afford to piss EVERYONE off, and that's exactly what multiple DOWs on the same CS (especially one under a Civ's protection) will do.
 
I was under the impression that a single DoW on a city-state wouldn't trigger the eternal war from all city states. I thought it took multiple DoWs (in my experience, 3).
Eternal war was removed with G&K. Now your resting point will just be shifted towards negative values for each DoW on city states.
 
Eternal war was removed with G&K. Now your resting point will just be shifted towards negative values for each DoW on city states.

Yeh, exactly, that's what I've noticed as well - no more perm-war with all city states. As to the arguments about pissing off other people/city states - I suppose it depends which level you're playing at, I'm playing Deity exclusively these days and what I experience is multiple DoW's just because I appear on the demographic screen as 'the easy target', so trying to nurture/maintain friendships early on is not really that helpful, whereas having a decent sized city, often with loads of luxuries/resources could be very useful early on. Mostly what I wonder though, is whether a human player could do the war/peace thing over the course of multiple turns, or at a certain point is 'declare war' removed from the option list with the city state. As it stands, you could theoretically use a couple composites and a warrior and take out a city state - with zero losses, this assuming your two composites are doing more damage to the city state than it is healing in a turn (which I would assume would be the case if you beeline construction).

To enhance the 'exploit' further, you could theoretically take the city state using this method, then possibly gift it to an AI the same turn, hope they puppet it, then attack it and be the one liberating it and gain all the influence with it.. though maybe that's taking things too far ;)
 
...you could theoretically take the city state using this method, then possibly gift it to an AI the same turn, hope they puppet it, then attack it and be the one liberating it and gain all the influence with it.. though maybe that's taking things too far ;)
That would be hilarious! :lol: Perma ally even after wiping it.
 
Tried it out yesterday - had 5 CS conquered within 80 turns without losing a single unit... (Immortal). But from then 4 out of 5 AI's declared war on me simultanously the whole game long, so I had to conquer all of them instead going for any other strategy.

But the strategy itself is a really good one (unless You get a spawning point right in the middle of everyone). You conquer a couple of CS, Your army does not die, only gets experience. Then You simply go for domination game and with the bonuses from cities conquered early You'll have the edge to win easily. Additionally You can implement somewhat of ICS into the game when Your happiness enables You to do so. Gengis would be so proud...
 
Tried it out yesterday - had 5 CS conquered within 80 turns without losing a single unit... (Immortal). But from then 4 out of 5 AI's declared war on me simultanously the whole game long, so I had to conquer all of them instead going for any other strategy.

But the strategy itself is a really good one (unless You get a spawning point right in the middle of everyone). You conquer a couple of CS, Your army does not die, only gets experience. Then You simply go for domination game and with the bonuses from cities conquered early You'll have the edge to win easily. Additionally You can implement somewhat of ICS into the game when Your happiness enables You to do so. Gengis would be so proud...


oh nice, thanks for trying it out to see that it worked fully, I haven't had a chance yet. yeah I imagine it often depends on the situation, such as whether you really want to piss off the entire world, but if you're up in a corner with a couple of city states on the border of you and an AI, why not take those two cities out? especially on Deity while playing a civ with no diplomatic bonuses, in which case those city states will inevitably be turned against you. As you mention also, you're getting free experience on your units, which is always valuable. Also, as I said in a previous post, I find on Deity and sometimes Immortal, the AI is always dowing me anyhow, based on my barely ever having 'army size demographic' greater than the lowest (except in cases of an AI being taken over by another AI or myself). I don't know why my army size always appears so small considering when I go to war I find I always have equal numbers, the only thing I can think is that since the AI's cities are generally twice the size of mine, with castles and walls, this is artificially bumping up their demographic, making them think their army is larger.
 
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